At night they seek the shore, and wander several miles over the country, luxuriating among its rank grasses.  To within four miles of the town of Bagamoyo (the Kingani is eight miles distant) their wide tracks are seen.  Frequently, if not disturbed by the startling human voice, they make a raid on the rich corn-stalks of the native cultivators, and a dozen of them will in a few minutes make a frightful havoc in a large field of this plant.  Consequently, we were not surprised, while delayed at the ferry, to hear the owners of the corn venting loud halloos, like the rosy-cheeked farmer boys in England when scaring the crows away from the young wheat.

The caravan in the meanwhile had crossed safely—­bales, baggage, donkeys, and men.  I had thought to have camped on the bank, so as to amuse myself with shooting antelope, and also for the sake of procuring their meat, in order to save my goats, of which I had a number constituting my live stock of provisions; but, thanks to the awe and dread which my men entertained of the hippopotami, I was hurried on to the outpost of the Baluch garrison at Bagamoyo, a small village called Kikoka, distant four miles from the river.

The western side of the river was a considerable improvement upon the eastern.  The plain, slowly heaving upwards, as smoothly as the beach of a watering-place, for the distance of a mile, until it culminated in a gentle and rounded ridge, presented none of those difficulties which troubled us on the other side.  There were none of those cataclysms of mire and sloughs of black mud and over-tall grasses, none of that miasmatic jungle with its noxious emissions; it was just such a scene as one may find before an English mansion—­a noble expanse of lawn and sward, with boscage sufficient to agreeably diversify it.  After traversing the open plain, the road led through a grove of young ebony trees, where guinea-fowls and a hartebeest were seen; it then wound, with all the characteristic eccentric curves of a goat-path, up and down a succession of land-waves crested by the dark green foliage of the mango, and the scantier and lighter-coloured leaves of the enormous calabash.  The depressions were filled with jungle of more or less density, while here and there opened glades, shadowed even during noon by thin groves of towering trees.  At our approach fled in terror flocks of green pigeons, jays, ibis, turtledoves, golden pheasants, quails and moorhens, with crows and hawks, while now and then a solitary pelican winged its way to the distance.

Nor was this enlivening prospect without its pairs of antelope, and monkeys which hopped away like Australian kangaroos; these latter were of good size, with round bullet heads, white breasts, and long tails tufted at the end.

We arrived at Kikoka by 5 P.m., having loaded and unloaded our pack animals four times, crossing one deep puddle, a mud sluice, and a river, and performed a journey of eleven miles.